What else is hiding in Clinton portrait?

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Photos:Bill Clinton's life and career

Bill Clinton served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Click through the gallery to look back at moments from his life and career.

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Photos:Bill Clinton's life and career

Clinton was born in Hope, Arkansas, on August 19, 1946. He is seen here the following year.

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Photos:Bill Clinton's life and career

A young Clinton shakes hands with President John F. Kennedy while other American Legion Boys Nation delegates look on during a trip to the White House in 1963.

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Photos:Bill Clinton's life and career

In 1974, Clinton ran unsuccessfully for the House of Representatives seat for Arkansas' Third Congressional District.

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Photos:Bill Clinton's life and career

Clinton was elected governor of Arkansas in 1978. He is seen here with civil rights activist Rosa Parks and first lady Rosalynn Carter in July 1979.

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Photos:Bill Clinton's life and career

Talk show host Arsenio Hall gestures approvingly as Clinton plays Elvis Presley's "Heartbreak Hotel" on the saxophone during a taping of "The Arsenio Hall Show" in 1992.

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Photos:Bill Clinton's life and career

During his 1992 campaign for the presidency, Clinton and his Democratic running mate, Sen. Al Gore, tour a factory in Davenport, Iowa.

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Photos:Bill Clinton's life and career

Clinton debates President George H.W. Bush and independent candidate H. Ross Perot (not pictured) at Michigan State University in Lansing, on October 19, 1992. It was their third and final debate.

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Photos:Bill Clinton's life and career

From left, Hillary Clinton, Tipper Gore, Bill Clinton and Al Gore celebrate their successful bid for the White House from the Old State House in Little Rock, Arkansas, on November 4, 1992. Clinton won with 43% of the vote to Bush's 37% and Perot's 19%.

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Photos:Bill Clinton's life and career

The Clinton's cat, Socks, is photographed outside the Governor's Mansion in Little Rock on November 17, 1992.

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Photos:Bill Clinton's life and career

President Ronald Reagan presents Clinton with a jar of red, white and blue jelly beans in Los Angeles on November 27, 1992. Reagan said they kept him from smoking cigarettes.

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Photos:Bill Clinton's life and career

Clinton takes his morning jog through the National Mall in Washington on May 8, 1993.

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Photos:Bill Clinton's life and career

James Brady, the Reagan administration press secretary who was wounded during the 1981 assassination attempt, watches President Clinton sign the Brady Bill at the White House on November 30, 1993. The bill required a five-day waiting period for handgun purchases, ending a seven-year gun-control battle.

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Photos:Bill Clinton's life and career

From left, Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton attend the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) signing ceremony at the White House on September 14, 1993.

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Photos:Bill Clinton's life and career

Clinton calls on a reporter during a news conference in the East Room of the White House on March 24, 1994. The President said he would release his tax returns from the late-1970s to answer questions about his Whitewater investment. Six years later, independent counsel Robert Ray closed the Whitewater investigation, clearing the Clintons of any wrongdoing in the real estate scandal.

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Photos:Bill Clinton's life and career

Clinton rides in a 1967 Ford Mustang during a visit to the Charlotte, North Carolina, Motor Speedway on April 17, 1994.

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Photos:Bill Clinton's life and career

White House intern Monica Lewinsky embraces President Clinton at a Democratic fund-raiser in Washington on October 23, 1996.

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Photos:Bill Clinton's life and career

Clinton tees off on the first hole at Farm Neck Golf Club during a visit to Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts on August 22, 1997.

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Photos:Bill Clinton's life and career

Paula Jones, center, arrives at the office of a lawyer representing President Clinton in Washington on January 17, 1998. The former Arkansas state employee filed a federal civil lawsuit in 1994 accusing Clinton of making "persistent and continuous" unwanted sexual advances during a conference in 1991, when he was governor. The President agreed to an $850,000 settlement on November 13, 1998.

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Photos:Bill Clinton's life and career

President Clinton speaks about the Monica Lewinsky scandal at the White House on January 26, 1998, as First Lady Hillary Clinton looks on. "I did not have sexual relations with that woman," he said.

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Photos:Bill Clinton's life and career

Members of the 105th Congress and guests fill the Senate chamber as President Clinton delivers his State of the Union address on January 27, 1998.

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Photos:Bill Clinton's life and career

Vice President Gore looks on as Clinton places an "0" on the board showing what the federal deficit will be after unveiling his balanced budget plan for 1999, during a ceremony at the White House on February 2, 1998. The President declared an end to "an era of exploding deficits," sent a $1.73 trillion budget to Congress that promised the first surplus in more than three decades.

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Photos:Bill Clinton's life and career

The Clintons, and their daughter Chelsea, center, depart the White House on August 18, 1998, with their dog Buddy on their way to a two-week vacation in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. Clinton gave a televised address a day before to the American people from the White House regarding his testimony earlier to a federal grand jury in which he admitted to an inappropriate relationship with Monica Lewinsky.

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Photos:Bill Clinton's life and career

Clinton answers questions from reporters on December 17, 1998, before the start of a meeting with his foreign policy team, including National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, left, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Defense Secretary William Cohen and Vice President Al Gore at the White House. After a December 16 military strike on Iraq, Clinton warned Iraqi President Saddam Hussein against threatening his neighbors. Clinton also indicated his determination to complete the operations that continued the next day with renewed bombing of Iraqi sites suspected of housing parts to manufacture weapons of mass destruction.

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Photos:Bill Clinton's life and career

The Clintons listen as House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt addresses the nation on December 19, 1998, at the White House after the House of Representatives voted to impeach the President on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice related to the Lewinsky scandal. A defiant Clinton rejected calls for his resignation following the House vote.

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Photos:Bill Clinton's life and career

Clinton pauses while reading a statement in the Rose Garden of the White House after the Senate voted to acquit him on February 12, 1999, in Washington. Clinton apologized for the actions that led to his impeachment, saying he was "profoundly sorry."

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Photos:Bill Clinton's life and career

Clinton meets with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, left and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat on July 25, 2000, at Camp David at the end of a Mideast peace summit. The talks ended without an agreement.

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Photos:Bill Clinton's life and career

Clinton leaves McDonald's after stopping for a crispy chicken sandwich, fries and a large Diet Coke following his passing of the symbolic torch as the leader of the Democratic Party to vice president and Democratic presidential candidate Gore in Monroe, Michigan, on August 15, 2000.

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Photos:Bill Clinton's life and career

Clinton speaks at a New York Senate fund-raiser on October 22, 2000, at the Bonnie Castle Resort in Alexandria Bay, New York. Clinton attended four fundraisers throughout New York state in support of his wife's Senate campaign.

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Photos:Bill Clinton's life and career

Clinton and daughter Chelsea wave before boarding his plane at Andrews Air Force Base as he leaves Washington following Bush's inauguration on January 20, 2001. Clinton was heading to his new home in Chappaqua, New York.

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Photos:Bill Clinton's life and career

Clinton cheers a group of saxophone players at the conclusion of a rally on July 30, 2001, at the Adam Clayton Powell State Office Building in Harlem, New York. Harlem residents welcomed Clinton, who was moving into his new post-presidential office in the building.

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Photos:Bill Clinton's life and career

Dr. Craig Smith, right, answers a reporter's question about Clinton's status after Clinton's quadruple bypass surgery in September 2004. Clinton was hospitalized after suffering chest pains and shortness of breath. Doctors announced that some of Clinton's arteries had been blocked more than 90%.

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Photos:Bill Clinton's life and career

(From right) Clinton stands with his wife, daughter, President George W. Bush, Laura Bush, former President George H.W. Bush, Barbara Bush, former President Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn Carter during the inauguration of the William J. Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock, Arkansas, on November 18, 2004. The library and museum includes some 76.8 million pages of paper documents, 1.85 million photographs and over 75,000 artifacts from Clinton's eight years in the White House.

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Photos:Bill Clinton's life and career

Clinton gestures as he explains to journalists that the baby being held was born just two days ago at Teureubeuh village refugee camp in Jantho, Indonesia, on May 20, 2005. Clinton visited the Indonesian ground zero of the tsunami disaster on a mission to galvanize the delivery of aid to areas still struggling to recover. Under heavy security, Clinton held talks with United Nations and government reconstruction officials at the main airport in the western province of Aceh, where more than 128,000 people lost their lives in December 2004.

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Photos:Bill Clinton's life and career

Clinton visits with Hurricane Katrina evacuees in the Reliant Center adjacent to the Astrodome in Houston on September 5, 2005. That same day, former President George H.W. Bush and Clinton announced the formation of the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund, to assist victims of Hurricane Katrina.

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Photos:Bill Clinton's life and career

On January 12, 2006, in New York City, Clinton announces that an agreement was reached by the Clinton Foundation that will allow the sale of anti-retroviral drugs Efavirenz and Abacavir, as well as HIV tests, at a lower cost in developing countries. Anti-retroviral drugs and rapid tests were regarded as part of the Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative.

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Photos:Bill Clinton's life and career

The former President addresses the Democratic National Convention on August 27, 2008, at the Pepsi Center in Denver, Colorado. Democrats made history on August 27, installing Barack Obama as the first black presidential nominee of a major U.S. party. A state-by-state roll-call vote was dramatically suspended when Hillary Clinton appeared on the floor of the convention and called for Obama to be nominated by acclamation.

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Photos:Bill Clinton's life and career

Journalist Laura Ling speaks in front of Euna Lee, former Vice President Gore and former President Clinton after Ling and Lee arrived in Burbank, California, on August 5, 2009, after being released by North Korean authorities. Ling and Lee, of San Francisco-based Current TV, were arrested by North Korea in March for illegally entering the country on the Chinese border. They were pardoned by President Kim Jong-Il after a meeting with Clinton. Ling and Lee had been sentenced to 12 years in prison.

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Photos:Bill Clinton's life and career

Clinton visits the General Hospital of Port-au-Prince on January 18, 2010, after a 7.0 earthquake sturck the country. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon placed Clinton in charge of overseeing aid and reconstruction efforts in Haiti on February 3, 2010.

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Photos:Bill Clinton's life and career

Bill Gates, co-founder and co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, testifies with Clinton before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Capitol Hill on March 10, 2010. Gates and Clinton voiced their support for legislation that would increase funding for global health and outlined what they believe could be cost-effective ways to fight HIV/AIDS and poverty around the world.

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Photos:Bill Clinton's life and career

The former President walks his daughter Chelsea down the aisle during her wedding to Marc Mezvinsky at the Astor Courts Estate in Rhinebeck, New York, on July 31, 2010.

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Photos:Bill Clinton's life and career

Clinton welcomes President Barack Obama to the stage during a campaign rally on November 4, 2012, in Concord, New Hampshire. With only two days left until the presidential election, Obama and his opponent, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, were stumping from one "swing state" to the next in a last-minute rush to persuade undecided voters.

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Photos:Bill Clinton's life and career

Clinton speaks to China's President Xi Jinping during a meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on November 18, 2013.

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President Obama awards Clinton the Presidential Medal of Freedom in the East Room of the White House on November 20, 2013. The medal is considered the nation's highest civilian honor, presented to individuals who have made meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.

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Photos:Bill Clinton's life and career

Bill de Blasio, right, is sworn in as New York City mayor by Clinton on the steps of City Hall in Lower Manhattan on January 1, 2014. With them are de Blasio's daughter Chiara, wife Chirlane and son Dante.

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Photos:Bill Clinton's life and career

Former Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush share a laugh during a September event launching the Presidential Leadership Scholars program at the Newseum in Washington. With the cooperation of the Clinton, Bush, Lyndon B. Johnson and George H. W. Bush presidential libraries and foundations, the new scholarship program will provide "motivated leaders across all sectors an opportunity to study presidential leadership and decision making and learn from key administration officials, practitioners and leading academics."

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Photos:Bill Clinton's life and career

Hillary and Bill Clinton hold their granddaughter in September at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York. Charlotte Clinton Mezvinsky is the first child of their daughter, Chelsea.

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Presence of newspaper will one day be element that most places portrait in time

Mat Gleason is a Los Angeles-based art critic. He is the founder of Coagula Art Journal and a regular contributor to the Huffington Post Arts Page.

(CNN)Artists who take risks always risk a backlash.

Nelson Shanks, who painted the official portrait of President Bill Clinton, has been feeling the heat over his recent revelation that he hid some unflattering symbolism in the painting -- a shadow on the fireplace mantle, supposedly cast by a blue dress. It was Shanks' way of evoking Monica Lewinsky, the intern with whom Clinton had a scandalous fling while in office.

Mat Gleason

While the portrait is done in a conservative realistic style, the idea that the artist took risks in expressing his interpretation of the Clinton legacy is fascinating.

The shadow next to Clinton is unmistakably a figure and serves to scar the picture, much as the Lewinsky scandal scarred Clinton's second term. But in a way it is sympathetic -- a shadow is impermanent. It leaves no mark. It is not a lasting stain, which some critics of Clinton say the Lewinsky scandal left on the presidency itself.

But Shanks shows a wry humor in some other facets of the portrait. Since he has admitted the symbolism of the blue dress, it is natural to look more deeply at the work in search of other symbols.

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For example, Clinton has two fingers conspicuously pointing outward at his waist. Could this be a commentary on there being two versions of the truth that he was known to deliver as it suited him? Much has been made of the absence of a wedding band on his hand, but the obviousness of the two fingers is unmistakable, and when the artist himself is pointing out the shadow of the blue dress as a metaphor, it is natural to wonder at their significance.

Clinton was the second American president to be impeached. Neither he nor Andrew Johnson were removed from office. Johnson's presidential portrait by Washington B. Cooper reflects its times with no complex allegories adorning the historical record of the man himself. It is a sign of the era in which we live that painters have the freedom, and some would say temerity, to add pictorial interventions that are meant to stand as the historical visual record.

While artistic freedom is a hallmark of our country, Shanks is also making an artwork for a client. How much freedom he has to add his own commentary can be spelled out in a contract, but a true artist should stand above petty stipulations and make the artwork he or she truly believes in.

If the need to express the Lewinsky scandal compelled Shanks, we can only assume that we then have the best possible portrait of Clinton that this artist could have made. Had he been held to petty stipulations by a signed agreement, you can bet the portrait of our 42nd President would have been stiff and untrue. Censoring an artist with a contract ahead of time is as bad as banning the artwork after its release.

One thing everyone will probably agree on is that this portrait is already painfully dated. In his right hand Clinton holds a newspaper. Surely there are presently groups of Smithsonian museum-bound school children who will see the need to have a paper delivered with the days news as being the antiquated equal of a horse and buggy.

Monica's shadow might end up reflecting an era where America's morals were looser but that newspaper will probably be what makes the Clinton portrait seem as yesteryear as the founding fathers.